Thursday, October 16, 2008

Generation Y

Found this piece of info on Wikipedia and thought it was interesting as well as true.

Generation Y, sometimes referred to as "Millennials, "Echo Boomers", or jokingly as "Generation Why?", refers to the cohort of individuals born, roughly, between 1981 and 1994

Generation Y is the generation following Generation X from 1980 (Millenials) to roughly 1994. The generation is also alternatively defined as the children of the Baby Boomer generation. A majority opinion begins Generation Z around 1996.

Generation Y, like other generations, was shaped by the events, leaders, developments and trends of its time. Generation Y grew up during the economic high of the dot com bubble during the late 1990s, which created a tremendous budget surplus, and witnessed that peace and prosperity shatter with the 9/11 attacks of 2001. They have witnessed the United States decline in global standing during the 2000s due to two ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rise of instant communication technologies made possible through use of the internet, such as email, texting, and IM and new media used through websites like YouTube and social networking sites, may explain Generation Y's reputation for being peer oriented and for seeking instant gratification. The period of unprecedented prosperity in U.S. history during which they grew up in during the 1990s perhaps shaped their values, explaining Generation Y's reputation for being status seekers and "all about me", somewhat similar to the Baby Boomer ethos. This trend of communication is continuing into Generation Z. (None of these statements achieve a level of unbiased evaluation. This trend actually defies laws of evolution and comes back in style with members of Generation X as they gain both wealth and greed.)

In their recent book, Connecting to the Net.Generation: What Higher Education Professionals Need to Know About Today's Students, Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa found that in a survey of 7,705 college students in the US: